The Tenth International Media Readings in Moscow: ‘Mass Media and Communications – 2018’

Abstract

On 25 October 2018 the Faculty of Journalism, MSU held the 10th International Moscow Readings conference ‘Mass Media and Communications – 2018’. The overarching theme of the conference this year was ‘Digital Transformations of Mass Media: Regional, National and Global Aspects’. The conference was attended by 200 scholars from 30 countries around the world, who presented a fascinating variety of contemporary media studies. As in the previous years, the conference was organized with support from the Federal Agency for Press and Mass Communications of the Russian Federation. During opening ceremony, Dean of the Faculty of Journalism Professor Elena Vartanova mentioned that the conference has proved to be an efficient platform for establishing not only academic, but also friendly relations between media researchers from all over the world. She also presented an Award of Excellence to Professor Paolo Mancini (University of Perugia, Italy) as a sign of respect for his great academic achievements and as a sign of gratitude for more than 10 years of fruitful cooperation between the Faculty of Journalism, MSU and University of Perugia. The framework of the conference was outlined by the keynote speakers during two plenary sessions. A constellation of respected scholars included Professor Elena Vartanova (Lomonosov Moscow State University, Russia), Professor Paolo Mancini (University of Perugia, Italy), Professor Hannu Nieminen (University of Helsinki, Finland), Professor Philip Seib (University of Southern California, U.S.A.), Professor Andreas Hepp (University of Bremen, Germany), Professor Pal Tamas (Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Hungary) and Dr Massimo Ragnedda (Northumbria University, Great Britain). In their keynote addresses, speakers covered crucial issues of modern media studies like digital divide, informational rights, ‘echo chambers’ and informational ‘bubbles’ in the Internet, mediatization and robotization of social processes, etc. Professor Andreas Hepp focused in his speech on the phenomenon of deep mediatization as a social meta-process, which means that it is structured by humans and should be analyzed as such. Professor Hannu Nieminen mentioned that media today are central to democracy; but at the same time, they are part of the process of normalization of inequality. In the media, the growing gap between the haves and the have-nots is thus becoming a ‘new normal’. Professor Paolo Mancini argued in his presentation that the recent emergence of the so called ‘echo chamber’ phenomenon represents something new for the U.S.A., while many European democracies have witnessed for many years a sort of news media ‘affiliation consumption’ (selective exposure), very similar to the ‘echo-chamber’